Cognitive Stylistic Conceptualization of Legal Translation

Among the newly developed ideas in the relationship of translation to style is the strong link between translation and cognitive stylistics. The result of this link is the introduction of cognitive conceptualization to translation as one way of comprehending and rendering meaning of the SL into the TL. On the other hand, it can help solve some problems of legal translation based on cognitive cultural conceptualization of legal terms and expressions. This paper is an attempt to introduce new clues for sorting out a number of legal terminology in the light of latest cognitive approaches to the conceptualization of style which can be applied to legal language in the translation between the two languages, Arabic and English. This is achieved through introducing cognitive stylistic approaches to the conceptualization of the style of legal language in translation and how untrodden ways of legal meanings and implications can be traced and unearthed in the process. The paper ends up with some conclusions about suggesting way-out solutions to several problems of legal translation between the two languages concerned, to be put in use later by legal translators.

Final Theses of Students of Faculty of Law in Lithuania: 1925-1939

The study examines the final students’ theses of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lithuania (later – Vytautas Magnus University), which was the only one university during the interwar period in Lithuania. Thus, it was the only place where lawyers were prepared. The research is based on the different branches of law, considering structure, literature, legal acts, jurisprudence students used in their theses, and the Lithuanian legal language of that time. The most valuable and interesting quotes of students are presented, the teachers who assessed their works are named, and the fates of the students and teachers are revealed. The research covers over five hundred students’ final theses written between 1925 and 1939. Namely, such a number of final theses are held in the Department of Manuscripts of Vilnius University Library. Noteworthy that around one thousand students graduated in law during the interwar period in Lithuania. Each of this thesis was reviewed in the series of four articles published in the Lithuanian language (Deviatnikovaitė, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d). This article summarizes all four articles and presents final conclusions. The theses reveal not only how the Faculty of Law educated lawyers, but also the legal topicalities of Lithuania at that time. Students wrote about various issues of civil, criminal, administrative, constitutional, labour, and international law. Historical, comparative, and analytical methods were used in the research.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE WORKING PERSON AND THE LANGUAGE OF LEGAL AND SOCIAL ANALYSIS

The subject of the analysis is the phenomenon related to the fact that the socalled Legal language, i.e. the colloquial language used by lawyers to describe legal phenomena, influences the interpretation of law. Moreover, the above impact is often negative for human rights. An example of such a phenomenon is the description of the phenomenon of employment through the prism of such concepts as employment, price for work, labor market or exploitation.

Easy-to-read legal texts as a means of FACILITATING the cognitive accessibility of legal language

The aim of this article is to examine the easy-to-read legal texts as a means of facilitating the cognitive accessibility of legal language. We begin our study by presenting the characteristics that make the legal language difficult to understand for its addressees non-jurists. Later, the applicability of easy-to-read version to different types of legal texts is considered. Finally, the author proposes a set of practical guidelines on the application of this method in the field of use of the legal language, which are illustrated with examples of foreign experience in thе area.

Ethno-Linguo-Cultural Specificity of Russian Official Concept “Court” in Europeanization Era

The article considers the nominative field of the concept "court" in the history of the Russian official language on the material of legislative documents of the 18 th century. The subject of the study is the relationship between the official segment of the concept "court" and the ordinary segment in the context of ethnic mentality. The hypothesis of ethno-cultural neutrality of the official segment has been tested. Special attention is paid to the evaluation nominations of the concept, their syncretsemia is revealed. The activity of non-terminological, morally and religiously marked nominations in relation to terms is found. Functional-semantic insufficiency of legal categories, their stable connection with moral and ethical categories in legal language consciousness is shown. Domination of semantic and conceptual constituents "truthful", "righteous / decent", "fair" over "legal" is established. The functional weakness of the conceptual sphere "law" is noted. The traditional ethno-specific perception of legal language consciousness is stated as predominance of moral and ethical concepts "truth", "righteousness", "fairness", "good", "conscience", "soul" over the "law". A high degree of ethno-cultural marking of the official segment of the concept "court" with a dominant meliorative valuation was noted. The analysis of the ordinary segment of the concept "court" in Russian paremiology revealed the above mentioned ethno-cultural concepts with a prevailing pejorative estimate. The coincidence of the justice pattern in the official and ordinary legal consciousness is noted.

LegalNLP - Natural Language Processing methods for the Brazilian Legal Language

We present and make available pre-trained language models (Phraser, Word2Vec, Doc2Vec, FastText, and BERT) for the Brazilian legal language, a Python package with functions to facilitate their use, and a set of demonstrations/tutorials containing some applications involving them. Given that our material is built upon legal texts coming from several Brazilian courts, this initiative is extremely helpful for the Brazilian legal field, which lacks other open and specific tools and language models. Our main objective is to catalyze the use of natural language processing tools for legal texts analysis by the Brazilian industry, government, and academia, providing the necessary tools and accessible material.

Alcune considerazioni sull’ipotesi di Sapir-Whorf applicata alla traduzione dei termini costituzionali italiani e spagnoli nell’ ottica comparativo-contrastiva

The main aim of this article is to contribute to raising the interest around legal language, rarely analysed in the Italian-Spanish translation perspec¬tive. In particular, the author ’s interest is concentrated on specific normative texts, the Italian and Spanish Constitutions, of which she takes some lexical features into account. The article shows, through the use of componential analysis, that the “translatability” of the above mentioned traits of legal text from one language to another is impossible, even for those languages which are considered “similar” like Spanish and Italian. In Linguistics this hypoth¬esis was supported by Sapir- Whorf and is particularly true if applied to the legal language. In fact, legal translation is “culture-bond” and it is inti¬mately related to the socio-economic structures which are peculiar to a country.

SIMPLIFICATION OF LEGAL LANGUAGE AS A WAY TO EXPAND SOCIETY'S ACCESS TO JUSTICE

This article, of a bibliographic nature, discusses the relationship between Law and language, with the purpose of highlighting the simplification of legal language as a way of expanding society's access to justice, especially lay society, which does not dominate the linguistic resources employed in the legal field. Understanding the content expressed through legal language is one of the conditions for guaranteeing access and effective fundamental rights for all citizens. To this end, it is necessary to adopt measures that enable the lay citizen to exercise citizenship through access to justice. Finally, it is understood that promoting reflection on the simplification of legal language is a way of bringing Law closer to society and fundamentally a way of democratizing access to justice.

Postulat usunięcia terminu obyczajność z Kodeksu karnego

In my article, I formulate and describe the demand to remove the term obyczajność (propriety) from the Penal Code. In the course of the analysis, I will attempt to prove that its presence in the Act is an example of cultivating a terminological tradition that dates back to the partitions period and was started for a reason that is currently out­dated – the general language was insufficient to describe sexual crimes. I also show that due to the discrepancy between the general and legal language, the use of the term obyczajność may mislead a non-professional interpreter of a legal text. The text con­cludes with a more precise description of the titular demand, i.e. a proposal to change the title of Chapter 25 of the Penal Code.